Re: Enlisting to Avoid the Dr...

PNFPNF@AOL.COM
Mon, 1 Sep 1997 18:35:30 -0400 (EDT)

I'd like to "second" Ted's remarks on compassion as a motivating factor for
(most of) the antiwar movement. We felt for the Vietnamese, we felt for the
draftees, we felt for our friends families selves should the war expand.
This was real--and was also the ideal, increased/intensified, of action, for
which many of us struggled--at least early on.
This whole issue of compassion, imagination, and empathy, in particular in
going beyond our own experience, applies to MUCH of what has been stated on
this thread. And a number of posts have shown a certain lack of these. In
fact, empathy and imagination are crucial to understanding splits in
development and consciousness in the later Movement (in any
movement/revolutions?), I think.
A few years ago, I saw "Battle of Algiers" for the first time since we gave
it standing ovations in '69--this time thinking to show my younger son films
more elevating than the bloody good guys/bad guys stuff on television.
Whoopsie, huh? -- BUT
what about those deaths and exploitations for decades/centuries of
racism/imperialism? Etcetera. I'm sure we're all familiar with these
arguments. But I am reminded, with this thread, again of how difficult it is
NOT to block one's compassion in the midst of the factions and fads and
struggles of a movement. The compassionate "liberal" who objects to
"excesses" is, doubtless, the person who has not been OR FELT WITH, in a real
way, someone who is homeless or has lost family to lack of medical treatment,
suffered health problems from constant humiliation at a job, had kids
destroyed by bad schools, self destroyed by psychological oppressions, etc.;
but how would one assure a successful revolution "gave in" to compassion
(even for the (ex)oppressors) before getting to firing squads, tumbrils, or
whatever. (This would happen, automatically, in the case of not external
attackers???)
If this question sounds like the sixties revisited, I guess that's the good
side of this thread. The conflicts are showing, no longer covered up.
Paula Friedman